PC Hardware Best Buy Guide: February 2018

It's time to revisit my list of the best PC hardware out there for your cash right now in my latest installment of the PC Hardware Best Buy Guide. I'll be taking a look at several price ranges and the best hardware I've tested and recommend for each range to build a great PC.

We've seen the introduction of AMD's Ryzen CPUs with Radeon Vega graphics and as they allow you to build a super-cheap PC, I've added a super-cheap AMD system that costs less than $500. I'll also be looking at a slightly higher price point for solid 1080p, 1400 and 4K gaming plus a mini gaming rig and content creation PC.

AMD's new Ryzen APUs allow you to ditch a discrete graphics card but still offers enough gaming grunt to handle modest settings at up to 1080p resolution. You won't be able to max out the settings but if you have a small budget, this is a perfect way to get into PC gaming, plus the motherboard I've chosen allows you to slot in a more powerful graphics card at a later date.

The Ryzen 5 2400G is the most powerful of two APUs AMD launched recently and it also offers plenty of grunt for video and photo editing too, thanks to its four cores and eight threads. If you want to save even more cash you could opt for the Ryzen 3 2200G, although it's less powerful inside and outside of games.

In my recent $500 gaming PC build, I picked Gigabyte's AB350M Gaming 3 motherboard as it can overclock your CPU. That's still worth considering, but here I've gone for the ASRock A320M-DGS which is one of the cheapest AM4 boards out there and perfect if you won't be overclocking.

I was massively impressed by Cooler Master's MAsterBox Lite 3.1 when I used it in the same build, and I can thoroughly recommend it for anyone on a tight budget. The PC will need tiny amounts of power so Corsair's VS450 power supply is more than enough and costs just $40. Finally, as I believe every PC should have an SSD, I've gone for the cheapest 240GB SSD I could find - the Silicon Power in the U.S and Drevo X1 in the U.K.

There's a choice to be made depending on your needs between an AMD and Intel processor here as both are good for the price. The Intel CPU offers a little more performance in some games, but the Intel system is more expensive thanks to motherboards demanding a premium. The AMD CPU I've chosen, the Ryzen 3 1300X has four cores like its Intel counterpart and thanks to cheaper motherboards, the AMD system is nearly $70 cheaper. The AMD system is the best price-wise, but you may want to consider the other system if you want maximum performance in games.

Graphics cards are ridiculously expensive at the moment thanks to cryptocurrency miners snapping them up and this means that the GTX 1050 Ti is a little more expensive too. Still, it can be had for around $200 and is a great card for 1080p gaming. If you can afford a little more, I'd highly recommend bagging a hard disk too so you can free up space on the SSD.

This is where we kick things up a gear as far as gaming prowess goes as the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is up for high frame rate 1080p gaming and can even handle most games at 2560 x 1400 and at high detail settings too. For around $1000 you should be considering a minimum of 8GB of memory. I'd normally recommend 16GB but like graphics cards, memory prices have risen too and a 16GB kit will set you back another $100 for little gain.

Getting more SSD space is key if you're a keen gamer so a 525GB Crucial M300 SSD is ideal and with the M.2 version costing just $2 more, now's the time to put that M.2 slot to good use and reduce the number of cables in your PC too. I've also opted for Phanteks' Eclipse P300 case, which I had hands-on with this month - I think looks great and has plenty of room for expansion. Meanwhile, Intel's Core i3-8350K is a great CPU at stock speed and even better when overclocked and is perfect for a mid-range gaming PC.

For a serious gaming system dealing with the latest titles at high frame rates and detail settings, you need to be looking at a GTX 1070 for up to 1440p-based resolutions or a GTX 1080 Ti for 4K gaming, so I've included the option of both here. I've also opted for Intel's Core i5-8600K, which will give some extra grunt in games that prefer lots of CPU cores, but the CPU is also one of the fastest out there in general for gaming too and is very overclockable. If you want to save some cash you could consider the Core i3-8350K as it's still a great CPU for gaming, even in a high-end system. Other boosts here compared to cheaper PCs include 16GB RAM, a 500GB SSD and an all-in-one liquid cooler.

This build is all about keeping things elegant and small and there's no better way to do that than with Phantek's Evovlv Shift. It's a little tall, but it has a tiny footprint and with aluminum and glass panels it looks stunning too. I've opted for the mini version of Z0tac's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, so there's plenty of poke in games, even if graphics cards cost a lot more at the moment than they did a few months ago.

If you opt for a liquid cooler, as I have, there's no space left for a hard disk so I've stuck with a 500GB SSD. There are mini-ITX cases out there that offer more storage space, such as Fractal Design's Nano S, but if you absolutely must have a hard disk, you could opt for a low profile air cooler instead such as Noctua's NH-L9x65 Also remember that the case requires an SFX-size PSU - you won't be able to use an old ATX one.

If you're serious about creating videos, editing photos, rendering or streaming, then you'll want a powerful CPU, plenty of memory and super-fast storage and that's exactly what I've gone for with the Content Creator PC. There's monstrous AMD Threadripper 1950X 16-core CPU, which is liquid-cooled, plus 500GB of PCI-E SSD storage all housed in a cool-running SilverStone PM01 case that has excellent air cooling for dealing with those lengthy editing or rendering sessions. I haven't gone all out on a graphics card here for the simple reason they're so expensive at the moment, but a GTX 1060 is enough to offer GPU accelerated applications some extra performance as well as provide some grunt for sneaky gaming sessions.

That's it for this month. Do feel free to reach out here on Forbes or on social media with any questions about any of the builds. I'll be back once AMD has launched its new CPUs with a new buyer's guide.